Originally Posted by SVT28

Update: I've been swamped this week with having to go out of town for corporate training and finally had some time today to make some calls.

Call #1: Smith and Wesson Customer Service. I spoke with Dave, and I explained the situation and as predicted, he was not familiar with the PC Comp40. I described the failure and the action(s) leading up to the failure and asked for his advice. Also as predicted, he said that due to this being a limited production gun, 25+ years old, and a gun that was purchased used, he was 99.9% positive that Smith and Wesson could not repair the gun either under warranty or at my expense. I asked him his advice and he said that the factory could "check it out" and determine what kind of failure occurred. He did say that the symptoms and location on the crack brings suspicion to round count or abuse from the prior owner, or just a stress failure from the limited production barrel. If I were to send it in, it would go 1 of 2 ways. They would evaluate the gun, write up a report regarding the root cause of failure (for potential followup with Federal) and keep the gun. They would give me some sort of credit towards a new gun, but it would not be a gratis exchange due to being out of warranty. The other option would be they evaluate the failure and if I choose to not take the discounted new gun, they would send me the whole gun back, cracked barrel and all. The reason why is that they would not take apart the gun since they cannot make the repair. Dave advised me to call Barsto next to get their take on the situation and see if they can help.

So dead end with S&W

Call #2: I spoke with a very very very sympathetic tech associate at Bar-Sto. I also explained the situation and I was surprised to hear him say, let me loop in the owner and see what we can do. After about 10 minutes of Q&A regarding the model, serial, barrel construction, compensator construction, etc, the owner said he thinks he may have a barrel in stock and the tooling to repair the gun. They requested me send an email with cliff notes, as well as pictures of the gun from all angles. Luckily, I took plenty of pictures pre failure and post failure, as well as saved the PC catalog ad from the early nineties. They wanted to confirm that this gun was not built on the 10XX platform first and foremost, and then they wanted to confirm how the barrel fits the gun with the compensator. I just sent that over and they promised to have some feedback in the next 24 hours. The owner did ask if I was able to remove the upper assembly and send it in, but I explained the the slide was locked up due to the tight tolerances and crack. Barsto did confirm that I could send the whole gun in for gunsmith work if they have the ability to replace/repair the cracked barrel.



SO... I'm holding off on making any more calls until I hear back from Bar-Sto. Thank you everyone for the recommendations and contact information for Scott Sullivan. He, along with a few other custom barrel shops, will be my next calls if things don't pan out with Bar-Sto. Fingers crossed!!!!

SVT28